Individual Differences in Face Perception

Faces are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and our ability to perceive and process them drives many important tasks, such as identifying age, emotional state, and health. Despite a rich body of literature on face perception, the mechanisms involved in perceiving and interpreting faces remain enigmatic. In this work I explore individual variations in face perception. Individual differences have been studied across many domains of perception because these differences provide rich insight into perceptual mechanisms and their variability. For higher level, more complex stimuli like faces, differences themselves have been identified but the bases for them are poorly understood. Across three studies I examine individual differences in how human faces are categorized, with the goal of characterizing the nature of the variability and the underlying processes involved. In my first experiment I measured face categorization judgments for race and sex for observers living in Reno, Nevada and Tokyo, Japan, to compare both the differences between and within cultural contexts. I found large and reliable individual differences in face categorization boundaries, which were substantially larger within than between groups. In a second experiment I tested whether these categorization judgments reflect general biases (e.g., to see a face as more female) or are specific to properties of the individual faces being judged. I found biases at the level of the face categories that were equally due to differences in observers and the face identities being judged. Finally, I test the hypothesis that differences in face judgments partly reflect differences in how face coding mechanisms are normalized in individual observers. Here, I found evidence for sensitivity differences across observers, likely driven by their long-term experience of the diet of faces they encounter. By utilizing individual differences, these studies provide a rich characterization of the patterns of variation in judgments about faces - one of the most important visual stimuli for humans - and reveal insights into the bases for these differences.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctorate Degree

Grantor

University of Nevada, Reno

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Kassandra R.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Webster, Michael

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Jiang, Fang
• Crognale, Michael
• Hoy, Jennifer
• Mathew, Dennis

• Face Perception
• Individual Differences
• Vision Science

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholarwolf.unr.edu/handle/11714/10993

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarwolf.unr.edu:11714/10993